ThingLink Acqu-hires Pixboom To Double Down On Fashion

ThingLink, which has a platform for tagging things inside images, has acquired Pixboom, an interactive image tagging service for the Swedish fashion industry. The terms of the deal were undisclosed but we understand it was an ‘acquhire’ in that ThingLink, in the main, wanted to bring the Pixboom team on board.

Founded in 2008 by entrepreneurs Jonas Sujkerbuik and Daniel Aspers and based in Stockholm, Pixboom already powers interactive images on hundreds of Swedish fashion blogs. You may not know this but fashion blogging is quite a big deal in Sweden. Suijkerbuijk also joins the ThingLink advisory board as the startup doubles-down on its growth into the fashion industry.

Since launching in 2010, ThingLink has amassed 20,000 publishers for its platform which allows people to share content and links to commerce or entertainment via online images. Brands and publishers are tending to use it as a way to drive traffic and marketing campaigns.

Back in October last year they launched ThingLink Labs which is an internal incubator the first project of which is Rich Media Notes, a printed version of ThingLink images, which will also include NFC tags.

ThingLink CEO Ulla Engeström told us at the Next conference in Berlin that “Sweden leads the way in fashion blogging, and we’re excited to merge our collective expertise.”

Whether this really does help scale ThingLink’s footprint is slightly neither here or there. Acquiring one company with a lot of images it can tag does work to some extent but won’t give ThingLink a super-boost – however, the expertise it gets in terms of the wider fashion industry is clearly valuable.